Odds & ends

• Despite being careful about what I was eating (or so I thought), I had more gallstone issues this weekend (Saturday night) -- albeit not as bad as what I went through last weekend, and I felt better on Sunday. Yesterday was okay, albeit slightly unsettled. Counting down till I can see the doctor on Thursday...! 
• I am not keen to have an operation to remove them, particularly now with covid still hanging around (and on the rise again...).  Aside from having my wisdom teeth out at 30, and my d&c last year (to check out my fibroids), I've never had surgery before. But if that's what it takes... (just so long as it doesn't interfere with our Christmas plans...). Life is too short, and 20 years of dealing with this, on & off, is quite enough for me...! 
• Meanwhile, tomorrow is Little Great-Nephew's SECOND birthday!!  The family party is Saturday, but dh & I will go to see him at SIL's tomorrow (our usual day for visiting), bearing cupcakes. :)  I feel so very lucky we get to spend time with him like this (in a way that we didn't when the nephews were small, and we lived further apart and were all working). 
• Sometimes it pays to Google yourself. :)  It's been a while since I Googled myself/this blog, and I got an interesting result recently: would you believe I found one of my posts from February 2013 cited in a paper published in a recent issue of The Feminist Philosophy Quarterly (!) -- "What Am I, a Piece of Meat? Synecdochical Utterances Targeting Women" by Amanda McMullen of the University of Arkansas. (The cited post was titled "'I'm more than just a uterus'," referring to an article I'd read -- also cited -- titled "Ask about my job, but not my uterus.")  Pretty cool. :) 
• I've been on the phone with my sister recently, talking about Christmas and making some plans. (How is it already mid-November?? -- YIKES.)  She'd been joking about doing "double Christmas" this year to make up for last year, since Christmas 2020 was pretty much a washout for all of us -- but it's become increasingly obvious in recent years -- even without COVID-19 (still) putting a damper on things -- that my parents (now in their early 80s) simply aren't up to doing Christmas the way we used to celebrate it. 
• There will still be (some) presents, and stockings, and baking, and Sis & I will do the turkey on Christmas Day for dinner, like we did on Thanksgiving, and we will try to share the cooking for some of the suppers while we're there (IF our controlling father -- the usual cook these days -- will let us...!) -- but for the most part, things need to be scaled back from what we've done in the past. My mother in particular finds it increasingly difficult to handle all the extra people in the house, the commotion and the upheaval to her normal routines, and as for getting out to shop for presents, extra groceries and other Christmas stuff, that was becoming difficult for her, even before COVID added an element of outright danger into the mix...!  
• I suppose it was inevitable.  I know some people express surprise that we're "still" exchanging gifts & doing stockings, at our ages. "Christmas is for kids," right?  (NOT.) (Not only, anyway!) Maybe other people stopped doing gifts and stockings, etc., among the adults a long time ago -- but more often than not, they've had kids and now grandkids around to buy for and play Santa for, and kids and then grandkids to provide the entertainment, and eventually to host the celebrations and carry on the traditions. The buck now stops with me & my sister, and although our parents still treat us like teenagers sometimes, we are 59 & 60 -- hardly spring chickens.  I live too far away to host, and my sister's house is too small (600 square feet -- and, frankly, too cluttered) to do it. 
• True, we've had the Little Princesses (Parents' Neighbours' Daughter's kids)  around at Christmastime the past 10 years to inject some of that kid-flavoured excitement into the holiday (and PND herself for 25+ years before that...!) -- but they have generally just come for dinner & presents on Christmas Eve, and for stockings on Christmas Day or Boxing Day (and to be honest, that's usually enough!  lol).  This year, we will probably just invite them over for brunch & stockings/presents for the kids. 
• (By then, they will have been out of school for more than a week. It's also possible -- albeit not likely -- they may have received their first shots by then too -- approval for vaccinations for kids ages 5-11 is expected within the next week or two, which doesn't leave a lot of time before Christmas...!) 
• Personally, I feel like Christmas would be pretty dull if we didn't have at least a few things under the tree to poke at and shake and finally open, lol. (Plus, it's one way to get my parents some of the things they need, without them putting up too much protest...!) Even last year, dh & I filled stockings for each other to open on Christmas morning -- it was mostly chocolate, scrounged up from the supermarket or drugstore (since just about everything else was locked down because of COVID-19) -- but it was something to open and munch on later and make the day just a little more special and Christmas-y. And I know my dad still gets a kick out of opening presents. So we're still doing some presents & stockings, but on a much smaller and more modest scale than in years past.  
• It sucks that we're all getting older, and it sucks that COVID-19 is still hanging around to play Grinch and make things difficult -- but (knocking wood and crossing all crossables...) we'll be together again, and that will be the best present of all, I think...! :) 
• Potential monkey wrench in our plans for Christmas: dh has been called for jury duty, starting next Monday!! (Nov. 29th)  It's not actual jury duty, not yet;  he needs to report to the regional courthouse (which is a half-hour drive from here) as part of a panel, and potential members of juries for upcoming cases may be drawn from that panel. 
• Our flights have been booked, and that may be enough for him to be excused, or at least have his service deferred to a future date. I will provide him with copies of our itinerary & payment receipts to show the people in charge. 
• I also can't imagine there would be too many trials (assuming he got selected to serve on a jury) scheduled to run over Christmastime, right? 
• I received a questionnaire in the mail four years ago to determine whether I was eligible for jury duty here, but (so far...!) have not been called. 
• Similar to dh, I was summoned to report for jury duty in our old community/region back in 2015 -- but the panel was cancelled and I was excused just a few days before I had to report.